On 9/18/05, Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org> wrote:> On Sun, Sep 18, 2005 at 01:21:23PM +0300, Denis Vlasenko wrote:> > This is it. I do not say "accept reiser4 NOW", I am saying "give Hans> > good code review".> > After he did his basic homework. Note that reviewing hans code is probably> at the very end of everyones todo list because every critizm of his code> starts a huge flamewar where hans tries to attack everyone not on his> party line personally.> > I've said I'm gonna do a proper review after he has done the basic homework,> which he seems to have half-done now at least. Right now he hasn't finished

Explain to us all what is this "basic homework" of which you speak.

> that and there's much more exciting filesystems like ocfs2 around that

This is exciting to... whom? The only thing that appears remotelyinteresting about it is that it's made by Oracle and apparently issupposed to be geared toward parallel server whatsits. This might behelpful to corporations, but seems senseless toward many consumers. (I'm assuming there's still at least one consumer left who still usesLinux.)

> are much easier to read and actually have developers that you can have> a reasonable conversation with. (and that unlike hans actually try to

Is that Hans' fault, or the fault of your lot? Why can't we all just get along?

Give Hans a chance; and please try to understand, even if he's hard towork with. Discriminate him because he's not a developer you can talkwith, and I believe that's like discriminating a guy in a wheelchairbecause he can't run with you when you jog in the morning.

> improve core code where it makes sense for them)

Not everyone has the same "common sense" that you do. Explain, fully,with reasoning, and reproducable back-up statistics on commonhardware, what code is wrong, and what must be written instead. We'dlike to be efficient, and it's not being efficient to play a guessinggame with us. If you don't have the time to review, then please holdoff on replying until you have a through review of at least part ofthe code.

Unless you object fully to one particular, fixable thing that isn'tthe core of Reiser4, it'd be nice for you to wait on replying --vagueness is not helpful to development in any way. Are we supposedto be the million monkeys randomly typing on a million typewriterswaiting for someone to give you code that you like, one in a millionyears?

Also, let's say that Reiser4 doesn't get into the kernel, as maybe XFSor ext2 or ext3 had never gotten into the kernel. How would theirdevelopment be now as opposed to how we see it, when they have gotteninto the kernel? I don't see anything wrong with the idea of lettingwhat seems a mostly mature FS into the kernel; that is how most bugsare found in the first place. Of course, there is nothing wrong withputting huge warnings on the FS; I'd recommend them, considering thatsome people are having funky problems with the patch.

I'm willing to go compare Reiser4 to ext2/3 as like H.264 to Mpeg-2. Indeed, H.264 crashes some computers, similar to Reiser4 might crashsome machines, but this is merely because Reiser4 explores newconcepts, meaning it may require hardyier hardware than ext2/3, asH.264 requries hardier hardware than Mpeg-2. I believe that theconcept is the same. (And all the same, media companies are embracingH.264 - why can't you guys embrace this new idea also?) Change ishard. Besides, if Reiser4 is truely that flawed, we will see in a fewreleases, and then afterwards if it's proven to everyone that Reiser4is completely unrepairable and hopeless, it can then be ditched andthrown into the trash.

My apologies for my rudeness, but I am rather fond of the developmentsin Reiser4, and would love to see it in the kernel. I am fond ofLinux too, and the work that you guys do, and it would dissapoint mesorrily if Reiser4 never makes it into the Linux kernel. Feel free tosay I'm a tad biased; I will say now that I probably have much lessmerit in the field than you guys do.